What To Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection Part Two (17 page)

I had no idea how long I had slept, but my headache was gone when I woke up. And at least I didn’t think I was going to throw up anymore. I looked up and found Jack awake, watching me.

He spoke softly and stroked my hair. “Hey.”

“Did you sleep?” I stretched a bit and then snuggled closer into his chest.

“No.”

“Are you okay?”

He shook his head and gently laughed. “I lay out all my fucked up dirty laundry at your feet and you ask me if
I’m
okay? And you wonder why I can’t keep away from you.”

He kissed my forehead. I sat up on the couch on my knees and straddled one leg on each side of him as he laid on his back. “If we are going to try this, there is no mixing business with pleasure for you. In fact, there is no pleasure for you with anyone but me.” I punctuated the sentence with my finger into his chest.

“Deal. But you know I don’t have much experience with relationships, so you need to have patience with me.”

I smiled at him. “Patience, yes. Tolerance for cheating, no.”

Jack moved and before I even knew what he was doing, he had switched our positions. I was on my back and he was kneeling on the couch above me, his legs straddled on either side of me.

“Got it, no cheating. And just so we are clear, you belong to me now, so no one touches your ass but me either.”

My heart melted at the thought of belonging to Jack. “Deal.”

Jack leaned down, bringing his face close to mine. “Are we done talking for now?”

I nodded. His handsome face so close to mine was a major distraction to my brain.

“Good, because, baby, I’ve been in this apartment for almost a day while your sweet little ass laid on top of me and squirmed with my fingers inside of you. If I don’t bury myself inside of you within the next five minutes, you aren’t going to be able to walk tomorrow.”

My eyes opened wide at his words, then narrowed and squinted as if to test him to see if he was telling the truth.

His smile was wicked and sexy. “On the couch or in the bedroom, babe?”

Okay, so he wasn’t kidding. My stomach did a flip and I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes, pretending it was a sacrifice. “Bedroom.”

“Good girl.” He scooped me up carried me into the bedroom.

For the first time since I moved to New York, I dreaded going to work. Jack and I had come so far in the last twenty-four hours and I hated that I had to leave him already. I wanted to stay in bed and snuggle with him all weekend. But I couldn’t let the band down, and the club would be busy on a Saturday night, so I forced myself to get up and get ready. When I walked out dressed for work, Jack was talking on his cell phone. I watched as he slowly looked me up and down. I had purposely dressed in my favorite red shirt and black form-fitting skirt, pairing it will five inch stilettos and a dozen long silver chains in all different lengths.

He kept his eyes on me as he spoke into his phone. “I don’t give a fuck what it costs, just do it.” He snapped the phone shut and walked to me.

“Is that what you wear to work every night?”

I played dumb. “No, I don’t wear this outfit to work every single night. I wear all different outfits, silly.” I placed the palms of my hands against his chest. “Everything okay, you sounded pissed on your call?”

“Yes, everything is fine. It was hotel business.” He wrapped one arm around my waist and tugged me against him hard. “Do you feel that, Syd? I just look at you dressed like that and I’m fucking hard again. How am I supposed to watch you go to work, knowing a room full of drunk men will feel the same way about my woman?”

Fuck. Me. His jealous streak excited me and now I was going to have to walk around all night with an aching between my legs. “I only want one man, sweetie.” I reached up on my tippy toes to kiss his mouth softly.

Jack had insisted that he drop me at the hotel on his way home. A sleek black Mercedes SUV was parked out front when we got downstairs. I took one look at the car and knew it was Jack’s. “Yours?” I looked at him and rolled my eyes in response to his smirk.

Jack navigated us with his hand at the small of my back to the SUV door and the driver jumped out to open it. The uniformed driver nodded to Jack. “Evening, Mr. Heston.”

We pulled up outside of the hotel and I had expected that Jack was dropping me off and going back to his place, but he told his driver to come back for him in an hour and got out with me. I looked at him quizzically as he helped me out of the SUV. “I have a few things to take care of here, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.”

He took my hand and we made our way through the hotel’s front door.

“Two?” I thought maybe I had missed something. What was the other thing?

Jack smiled an evil but sexy as hell smile. “Within five minutes of walking through the front lobby holding your hand, the entire staff will be buzzing. It will make you off limits and security will make it their business to keep a closer eye on you.”

I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the lobby. “So you’re essentially a dog pissing on his territory.”

Jack tightened the hand he was holding and pulled me to him, wrapping the other arm firmly around my waist. “Yep. Is that a problem, babe?”

I opened my mouth to respond and Jack used it as an opportunity to cover my mouth with his and kiss me. It wasn’t a sweet quick kiss, it was a demanding make my knees week and leave me breathless kiss. His tongue explored my mouth and licked at my lips, stopping to suck in my tongue. When he broke the kiss, he kept his face close to mine, and I was lightly panting. “That should do it baby.” He looked around, apparently satisfied with himself.

I peered to one side of the room, and then the other. Jack was right, we had apparently gotten the attention of everyone in the room. “You’re unbelievable.”

He kissed me chastely before letting me go. “And don’t you forget it, babe.”

An hour later Jack came back to the empty club while I was finishing my set-up routine and said goodbye. “Your place or mine tonight?” He said it like there was never any question that we would be spending the night together again that night.

I smiled. “Yours, your bathroom is bigger than my apartment.”

“I’ll be back at midnight for you.”

“That’s not necessary, Jack. I can take a cab to your place.”

He kissed me sweetly on the lips. “I want to.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

S
unday morning we slept late and it was early afternoon before we got out of bed. Jack ordered room service and a pot of coffee for me. We sat at his dining room table that could sit fourteen and I wondered how much entertaining he did that he needed such a big table.

“Do you host a lot of parties?”

“Here? No. The only people that have ever been up here are my boys that you met in Hawaii, and they don’t require a dining room table or hosting.”

His statement peaked my interest. “So, the five hundred or thousand women that you have …
entertained
, none of them have been here?” I dragged out the word entertained because fucked just didn’t seem appropriate at the dining room table.

I saw Jack’s face growing uncomfortable. “No, there has never been another woman in my bed, Syd. You are the first woman I’ve
entertained
here.” He drew out the word entertained the same as I did, mocking my choice of words.

My inner goddess was delighted with the news that no woman had been in his bed before. But something didn’t make sense. “So where did you
entertain
the women then?”

Jack’s jaw tensed and I instantly knew I wasn’t going to like the answer. He looked down at his plate. “I keep a room on the fifteenth floor.”

I almost choked on my coffee. “You keep a fuck room?” My voice was louder and more condescending than I meant it to be.

“I kept a room where I could spend the night, a small suite. I kept some of my things down there. It has an office in there too.” His voice was controlled and I could tell he was trying to restrain his emotion and not be defensive.

“Do you have an office here too?” I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, but it came out that way anyway.

“I told you I wasn’t proud of my past, Syd. But we’re together now and you’re in my bed, not in that room, so let’s not do this.” Jack got up from the table and stormed out of the room.

I sat for a few minutes, thinking. Jack was right. I was jealous and acting like a brat. He had been honest with me from the start and never pretended he was anything other than who he was. He didn’t deserve my judgment. I cleared the table and went to apologize.

I found him in his exercise room, running full speed with headphones on. He watched me as I walked in, but didn’t slow his pace or take out his headphones. I mouthed the words
I’m sorry
to him and he nodded his head as he ran. He was dripping from the insane pace that he was running at and his shirt was sticking to his heaving chest, outlining every cut of his gorgeous body. Jack kept running, but caught my eyes wandering around his body. I could tell that my admiration for his body had distracted him, but he appeared content to keep running.

I pulled off his big t-shirt that I was wearing and stood there before him, completely bare. His lust-filled eyes roamed all over my body, but still he didn’t break pace. Then I slowly knelt down and looked up at him under hooded eyes. That was it. He pushed stop and was in front of me within seconds. I pulled down his pants, opened my throat, and gave him the best apology I knew how.